Formality!

In an old Hindi movie, I remember a scene where a hero, beckons an elderly lady, while playing chess in a tone to indicate ‘something important/serious’, and as she approaches close to him, he bends a little, from sitting posture, and while making a move of a chess-coin/chessman, extends his left hand brings it near her feet, and touches his chest, without even moving his gaze/attention from the chess board. The elderly lady reciprocates with a look of satisfaction and even gratitude (the facial expression seems to say ‘Good, that at least some of these youngsters of today still remember good traditions!). I was a school going kid, and even I ‘fell’ for that act, since I had very few occasions to ‘touch’ the feet of elders, except when asked to do so! I also got confused, when people later tried to teach me “It is better to do something, someway, somehow, instead of not doing it at all!”. When I go through school lessons in that ‘somehow’ way, it did not work, it did not fetch marks, and more surprisingly, reverting to correct way seemed a Herculean task!

Formality also seems to be an elusive concept.

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“Informal”, is used to commonly mean as ‘casual’. And “formals” are for ‘formality-sake’ (not really keen/sincere/honest/etc….

T- hen when are we going to be intense or sincere about such ‘formal’ rituals/traditions/etc?

Or, should we really work towards removing this mental block, created by ourselves?

When a close junior colleague of a army commando group lays down his life, fighting the enemies, the senior gives a heartfelt, tears-filled-eyes, last salute to the lifeless bullet-ridden mutilated body of that soldier, even when no one else is around to ‘evaluate’ the ‘form’ of that salute. But to me, this salute means a lot more than the reciprocal salute of a nation’s monarch to a whole army marching past on a day like republic-day/independence day, though media coverage, journalistic coverage etc showers praises on the gaiety/glamour/splendor of such colourful occasion!

We also link ‘dignity’ with formality. A hard work, feels less dignified, when it not formally recognised by the ‘formal’ head, in the prescribed official ‘form’, and the compensation/incentive/etc is not in the acceptable ‘form’ that is ‘commercial-value’!

Please see, when ‘formalities’ like ‘thank you’, ‘good/good-morning’ etc seems too ‘formal’ amidst close-relatives/friends, inadvertently, the ‘dignity’ gets somehow ignored for the ‘self-less’ favours, and relationships erode for want of proper emotional evaluation! For instance, we are simply incapable of even imitating that innocent child who reciprocates a wide-eyed-glance when we give an unexpected chocolate. It seems quite stupid, when the embarrassed parent tries to persuade that child into mumbling something like ‘thank-you-uncle’ or so! The facial expression of joy-gratitude-love (all-in-one) seems to say it all !

While formality seeks to ‘ensure’ dignity to substitute any lack of awareness/ignorance, the non-formal or in-formal understanding of the concept seems to demolish that noble emotion of ‘due recognition of dignity’ either ways! To quote a typical example, the newly wed bride, when she makes her first visit to her parents house, heaves a sigh of relief, being left to her ‘normal’ self again, though for a brief while, as a sense of relief from that act of being ‘formal’ while interacting with the in-laws, till she ‘gets-used’ to being ‘only-formal’ for the rest of her life! No wonder, such ‘formal’ attitudes ‘caves-in’ like a feebly supported structure, sometime or other! And her parents find it ‘obvious’ to support recouping the ‘stress/strain/tensions’ of being casual for that brief visit, misconstruing ‘informal’ to be a ‘let-go’ recouping session! The delusion here is the mutually-supportive-emotions that replace ‘dignity’ with so called ‘love’! The parents did not really ‘enjoy’ parting their daughter, and the daughter did not really endure being ‘formal’, and so, that ‘mutual-benefit-scheme’ which seems like tons of emotion-filled-love—Even that does not work for too long! That is why we are trying to look at the subtle effect of ‘dignity’, and not the ‘formal’ display of recognition of ‘dignity’. As if to support my theory, the ancient concepts of bestowing ‘dignity’ to evolved beings through various rituals and spiritual practices seems to have gone un-noticed, and due to lack of proper strong foundation(i.e. deeper perceptions to feel/experience the un-noticeable subtle presence of the ‘dignitaries’ invoked, like ancestors/divine beings, etc) , such practices got reduced to mere formalities, and when paucity of time and money throttled us by the modern pace of life, even these formalities fell in line with the way we look at other formalities, and ultimately got dispensed with!

I still keep the options open, to view it any other way.

And so, to look at

The word itself,

In Indian languages(as an example), it is translated as..

Malayalam—“Aachara-pra- karam” (more or less means a tradition)

Tamil—Shadangu (a deformed version of a subtle and higher version shat-Anga, the six limbs of a spiritual aspect—not going into details here)

Hindi—upcharik/Oupchari- k (ritualistic sense)

Perhaps, in English itself, it takes a form from ‘form’. ‘Form’ is for uniformity sake, more or less to ensure that the ‘prescribed’ form ensures avoidance of inadvertent omissions of any kind!

(With this, it seems like I have ‘formally’ wound up this year, 2009! A sigh of relief to readers! If so, I would love to ‘informally’ just vanish! The call from mystic ‘dignitaries’ have been echoing a subtle whisper for too long!)